Classical, manual and mechanical methods of size analysis, petrological description and other analysis of rock and mineral particles are well-established and routinely used by the construction aggregates industries for quality control and for assessment of e.g. road aggregates and concrete aggregates. However, the traditional methods often require highly trained specialists and yet it is difficult to obtain reproducible results and they are tedious, time consuming and expensive.
Methods and equipment have been described in the prior art for optical analysis of mineral and rock particles, e.g. in WO 02/090942-A1; DE 29800809-U1; DE 20117494-U1; DE 20219141-U1; U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,130; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,309,215. However, none of the methods or equipment disclosed in said documents provide a three-dimensional analysis for automatic size and shape determination (e.g. classification according to form and angularity) of mineral and rock particles, nor do they provide analysis of petrographic composition.
There is a need for methods and equipment that can provide reliable and reproducible high-throughput measurement of mineral and rock particles for determining size, shape and preferably also the composition of such particles.